frequency ?

[name]

i've probably hit on something interesting that this person found motivation to plaster the thread with his stale jokes. whatever.

from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second

International second
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K.

compare with the following tale:
once upon a time there was a town called schilda in germany. during the 30-year war they were more lucky than others because the war somehow avoided them, but still they took some measures to secure their wealth. one of the worrying items was the bell from the church tower because the armies could take it for the brass, to make cannons. so they decided to sink the bell into the lake nearby. they loaded the bell onto a boat and rowed to the middle of the lake, where they threw it over board. one of the citizens was wise enough to mark the location of the bell so they could recoup it after the war: he cut a mark into the edge of the boat with his knife.

neither method is IMHO reliable to base any kind of sound knowledge of anything. in the case of time, a second is defined but not measured, rather arbitrarily. this is basically what motivated my original posting.

more about schilda and its citizens here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Men_of_Gotham
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schildb%C3%BCrger (german)

but here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time is something more interesting, a hint in the direction that time may be an "illusion", or rather, a device which the mind uses for purposes of orientation. the interesting part is here as quote, the rest is also interesting enough:

Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. This is the realist view, to which Sir Isaac Newton [1] subscribed, in which time itself is something that can be measured.

A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[2] and Immanuel Kant,[3][4] in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the mental measuring system.

Many fields avoid the problem of defining time itself by using operational definitions that specify the units of measurement that quantify time. Regularly recurring events and objects with apparent periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples are the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, and the swing of a pendulum.

also, i obscurely remember from uni that the problem of time was mentioned in relation to processor design. it was the time of the 486 and people were starting to run into lots of problems related to synchronization between different components on the chip. one of the efforts around solving the problem of "clock syncronization" was about "clockless design" IIRC.

in any case, if we explore the possibilities of time being merely a device of the mind - an "illusion" - then one could achieve "time travel" not by any surreal technology but by way of understanding the nature of the illusion - rather, how and why the mind sets it up - and learning how to disregard it. (edited. was: ... the phenomenon better and making use of whatever attributes the phenomenon has).

thanks BTW for the link to the chronos/kairos PDF. don't have the quite right now, but the first 3 pages are interesting enough. the thing about simultaneous presents is something that i've noted since childhood, like this: is "now" for me the same as "now" for the guy over there ? he obviously lives in the same world, but his "time" is not the "same" as mine.

 

[knowledge_of_self]

"Jokes are good - once in a while. But we do not need clowns whose only function is to distract busy people with jokes."

Ark, what exactly are you busy with?

OK. I don't know if this was meant to be another joke or not but I really had a laugh when I read this. Ummm... I don't speak for Ark and I agree with Beau about the fact that Ark meant the whole forum. But just so I can maybe bring a little bit of logic into this question. Please think to your self what is Ark's occupation? He is a theoretical physicist. Now, knowing that do you think being a theoretical physicist is an easy job or not at all time consuming?

Think about the amount of research Ark has to do to find out if a theory he has is correct or not. Think about the articles and essays he writes. The amount of research he must do to write those essays and articles. Think about all the help and support he gives to the SOTT team aside from his own work, and of course his own daily life management. Now putting all those together, does this answer your question of why Ark maybe a little busy?

Nina

 

[CarpeDiem]

Masked Avatar, in the spare time left of being infinitely patient with each of us Ark is busy with these issues
http://quantumfuture.net/quantum_future/
http://quantumfuture.net/quantum_future/qf-hist.htm
http://quantumfuture.net/quantum_future/jadpub.htm
Didn't you know that already? Would you please be not so busy to open each link and each link therein and read?
What is your goal in asking an array of such questions you came up with recently? An inner burden to study or "divertimiento, distraccion"? Critics should be constructive. Please value time (in general accepted sense) - your own and of each of us.

 

[noise]

Name?

Would you offer any link on the information that you touched on so far as the 486 processor? Could it be that your referring to for example; a screen saver of fish or something that ran fine on a 286 or 386 based system, you install the screen saver on a 486 however and the fish are flying all over the screen? Do you have a link that you could offer for a little more insight? This is truly fascinating. For the things that I was picking up on 'I' really started.. well either my vocabulary is limited or there is no word for it.

Maybe trancing is close but I think that has some negative connotations to it.

 

[Ryan]

"Jokes are good - once in a while. But we do not need clowns whose only function is to distract busy people with jokes."

Ark, what exactly are you busy with?

Yes MA - you are a good clown. But as Ark said, we do not need clowns here distracting busy people. Please take your clowning to a clown forum. Or go to clown school and study clowning some more, so that you may become a better clown.

Now, on the topic, I decided to do some reading on "variable physical constants" via Google. The first page gave a series of articles linking to research that seems to back up the immutability of physical constants, specifically the fine-structure constant.

Does using machines to narrow the uncertainty in measurement of such constants really provide a clearer picture of the Universe though? Being able to definitively state that constants do not fluctuate only occurs in the context of the observer's (or group of observers) awareness. If there are situations where the fine-structure constant actually does fluctuate, but these are not observed, then how can machines be built to measure the variations?

Without bringing in the consciousness of the observer as an element of the system, existing "laws" of physics will only allow for increasing precision in measuring the constants that drive the system deterministically (or so it seems to me). Only by honestly admitting observed phenomena that remains unexplained by existing physics, and attempting to form a hypothesis that accounts for them, will reveal a "new model of the universe" that can supersede the existing one. The risk when knowledge is expanding in this way is that the repeatable (and comfortable), deterministic systems beloved by so many academics may be shown to be fundamentally wrong.

Is "time" is the key here? And how the "measure" of it is defined?

http://www.transaction.net/science/seven/constant.html

Thanks for the interesting article snippets, name.